This Online University Is As Cheap As Your Phone And Cable Bills

Can college really be as cheap as phone and cable bills? That’s
what University
Now, a new online education platform, is promising.

Launched in March of this year, University Now is a for-profit
online model that allows students to take classes at their own
pace. Undergraduate students pay $796 per four-month term, or
$199 a month, for as many courses as they like, e-books included.

Targeted to working adults, and drawing heavily from the model of
Western Governors University, a nonprofit self-paced online
college founded in 1999 that now serves more than 30,000
students, UNow has already enrolled 4,000 students at its first
school called New Charter, according to founder Gene Wade. The
venture doesn’t rely on any federal aid, and it recently received
$17 million in venture capital funds.

New Charter offers two tracks – business and public policy, with
degrees ranging from associate to master’s in each. The faculty
has the typical credentials, everything from MBAs to PhDs, but
since they pre-record lectures and focus on either coaching
through email or live, online office hours, or evaluating, they
can work with a higher volume of students than at a
brick-and-mortar school and keep costs down.

Wade says that with the venture capital funds, they’ll be able to
add more schools to the program, including a community college
model, and increase the available majors. This week, UNow
announced a partnership with Patten University, a regionally
accredited four-year institution. The new online program will
offer bachelor’s degrees at just over $10,000.

But some think the idea sounds too good to be true. “There is
room for a business model that drives down the cost, but this is
such an extreme cut that it makes me question the quality of the education that results
from it,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, an
online financial aid resource.

Kantrowitz cites affordable lecture programs like MIT and
Stanford’s free online courses (both of which are not for
credit), as well as The Great Courses LLC, a DVD company that
sells lectures with professors, as modes for self learning, but
maintained that when it comes to getting a degree, you need more.

“If watching TV was all you needed [to do] to get a college
education, you’d have a lot more people doing it,” he said. “You
could watch 1,000 hours of PBS shows and
get a degree.” It’s also too early to tell how graduates of this
program will fare in the job market – and how employers will
regard a degree from UNow.

The school is competency based, meaning students can receive
associate, bachelor and masters degrees not by credit hours, but
by passing courses through competency exams. They need to pass 20
courses to earn an associate degree, 40 courses for a bachelor’s
and 12 for a master’s (but only after earning a bachelor’s
degree).

Though UNow has been accredited by the Distance Education and
Training Council, a non-profit agency recognized by the U.S.
Department of Education, it currently lacks regional
accreditation, which could prevent credits from transferring at
some schools. Most traditional brick-and-mortar colleges are
regionally accredited and some don’t accept credits from
nationally-accredited schools.

A DEBT-FREE OPTION?University Now comes
onto the market just as student debt levels have reached a critical
point: more than $1 trillion. The average student’s debt in 2011
was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000. At the same
time, 53 percent of bachelor’s degree holders were unemployed or
underemployed last year, making it harder than ever to pay back
the mounting debt.

Wade, a longtime education entrepreneur, says he began working on
the platform two years ago and wanted to create an education
model that would give students more affordable options. “It
became clear that this would be a great time to build an
affordable high-quality rigorous university that people wouldn’t
go into debt to attend,” Wade says.

Prospective students start by creating a free account at New
Charter University, and take an assessment test to discover what
they already know about the subject, allowing them to focus only
on course material that covers their problem areas.

Students can also access course curriculum before paying. Once
they feel ready, they can pay the fee to start taking tests and
work with advisors and coaches at their own pace to complete each
course. The final exam is moderated by a course specialist, but
only when students have demonstrated proficiency through quizzes
and a pre-exam. “We don’t let you sit through the exam unless
you're going to pass it,” Wade says.

Student data is also stored and used to discover which lectures,
quizzes and tasks are the most beneficial to students. Gene Wade
compares the system to the queue recommendations on Netflix. As students use the system and
complete assessments, the data reveals what methods worked and
what didn’t – and suggests materials based on a student’s unique
profile.

Though many applaud the innovation behind UNow, Kantrowitz says
that the hands-on instruction and guidance from professors that
comes with a traditional brick-and-mortar college is a crucial
part of the learning process.

“[University Now] is charging low enough [fees] for its degrees
that it can’t be providing sufficient face-time with faculty
members and tutorial sessions and the like, because it doesn’t
have the revenues to do that,” Kantrowitz says. “You get what you
pay for, and if you’re paying a tenth of what you’re paying at
another college, you’re probably getting a tenth of the quality
of education.”